Dartmouth outscored Kent State 17-2 over the last 11 minutes and beat the Flashes 60-49, Friday, in the Cal Poly Holiday tournament Saturday.

Kent State had taken a 48-43 lead with 11:29 to go but missed all 14 of its shots and four of five free throws for the rest of the game.

Krista White led Kent with a career-high 20 points. Larissa Lurken had 11. Montia Johnson had eight rebounds.

Kent outscored Dartmouth 30-14 in the pain but was out-rebounded 43-36.

The loss drops the Flashes to 1-5 on the year.

A more details post will be up a little later.

Kent State shot badly from the field and foul line and committed 26 turnovers as it lost to Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, 57-47, in the Cal Poly Holiday tournament Friday.
The Flashes were 20 of 57 (35 percent) from the field, 3 of 15 (20 percent) from three-point distance and 4 of 13 percent (30 percent) from the foul line.
Montia Johnson had a career-high 17 rebounds along with 12 points, but no other Flash scored in double figures.
Larissa Lurken, Kent’s leading scorer, was 2 of 12 shooting , 1 of 10 on three-pointers, and missed all three of her free throws.
Cici Shannon equaled her career best with six blocks.
The Flashes play Dartmouth at 6 p.m. Kent time Saturday.

The Kent State women’s team heads to California over Thanksgiving, but it will be playing an Eastern team and a Southern team.

The Flashes will be part of the Cal Poly/ShareSLO Holiday Tournament. On Friday they’ll take on the University of Texas at Corpus Christi. Saturday they’ll play Dartmouth.

Dartmouth is 2-0 and Texas-Corpus Christi 0-4, But Corpus Christi may have the better team.

The Islanders, who were 18-12 last year, lost four starters including their leading scorer to graduation. But they have four transfers, two of whom were top players on their previous teams.

Junior Shay Weaver holds the single-season record at Marshall for most three three-pointers, leads Corpus Christi with an average of 17.7 points per game. Second in scoring (16.0) and leading in rebounding (12.3) is senior Olivia Fouty, whom Kent saw during her sophomore and junior years at Eastern Michigan. Fouty had more than 500 rebounds over those seasons for the Eagles.

The Islanders aren’t a very big team. Fouty is 6-foot. Tallest starter is 6-1 sophomore 6-1 sophomore forward Camesha Davis. But they have a plus-3.3 rebounding margin per game.

Corpus Christi has lost to UNLV (2-2), 77-65, Houston (2-1), 68-66, and Rice (2-2), 59-54.

Brown won its opener over the New Jersey Insittitue of Technology in overtime, then beat winless Holy Cross 69-53 at home. The Big Green were 5-23 a year ago and are picked to finish sixth in the Ivy League. They return their leading scorer, 6-1 guard-forward Fanni Szabbo, who averaged 13.2 last year and is averaging 26 this year. Also back is their second leading scorer and leading rebounder, 6-foot junior forward Lakin Roland. She’s averaging 16.5 points and 12.5 rebounds in the first two games. Last year she averaged 11 points and 5.9 rebounds.

Audio of both games will be on Golden Flash Radio on iHeartRadio and Akron Fox sports 1350, starting at 5:50 p.m. As I write this Tuesday, I don’t see any word of video. You can check on kentstatesports.com later in the week to see if anything has been announced.

I’m out of town this weekend. I’ll try to listen/watch online, but you can always get results at the Kent State websiteite.

Some extra notes from Kent State’s 58-55 victory Tuesday:

• Freshman Madison Ridout had seven points, including a three-pointer, in 22 minutes. Both were career highs.
• Kent State outscored Belmont 33-21 in the paint but was outrebounded 41-33. The rebounding was after the Flashes outrebounded Northwestern of the Big Ten by 10 last week.
• Belmont made only 11 of 21 free throws. Kent wasn’t much better at 11 of 18.
• Seniors Cici Shannon, Montia Johnson and Mikell Chinn all played more than 34 minutes.
• Four Kent players had at least two fouls in the first half. Johnson had three. No one fouled out, but this team has only nine scholarship players who have significant minutes so far. They’ll have to avoid depth problems.
• Freshman Naddiyah Cross, who had been leading Kent with assists, played just five minutes. She was yanked after a turnover and a foul at a critical time in the second half.
• Freshman forward Jordan Korinek continues to struggle. She went 0 for 5, with two rebounds and four fouls in 16 minutes.
• Through four games, Lurken leads Kent State in scored at 12.8 points per game. The Flashes haven’t had a player average in double figures since 20011-12.

I was traveling most of the day yesterday.I was able to get a quick note up from the turnpike. But when I wrote this one at 11, I saved it as a draft instead of posting it. So here it is, finally.

It was a very big win — one of the top three, maybe even the top one of Danny O’Banion’s tenure as coach.

Consider:

• Just this: It was the first win of the year after several disappointing games — a big blown lead in North Dakota State, a completely blown second half against Youngstown.
• It was game against what should be a quality team. Yes, Belmont is 0-4. But three of those losses have been on the road, two to Vanderbilt and Louisville. It has five starters back. It’s picked to win the Ohio Valley Conference. And it beat Kent State by 24 points last year.
• It was a hard way to win a game. Kent State was up 10 after five minutes of the second half, then down seven with four minutes to go. But the Flashes outscored Belmont 7-0 to close out the game, capped by Montia Johnson’s put-back with five second to go.
• It was a game where Kent State did right the things it has to do right to win games. It shot 48 percent in the second half. It made five three-point shots against Belmont’s zone. Its three seniors — Johnson (11 points, seven rebounds), Cici Shannon (17 points, seven rebounds, two blocks) and Mikell Chinn (10 assists) led the way.
• It was a game where they found a scorer — Larissa Lurken, who had a career-best 20 points. She hit four of five three pointers in the second half. Just as important, she hit four two-pointers in the first half when the Flashes were struggling to score.
• It was a game where Kent State actually had fewer turnovers (12) than Belmont (18).

Some highlights from the team’s post-game press conference:

• O’Banion: “Our players are capable of this kind of production on a consistent basis, and they proved to themselves that they’re tough enough” to do that.”
• Lurken: “At first of game, I wasn’t that hot, but I knew had to keep shooting. One first one went in, I got into a kind of rhythmn. I’ve been working on those shots for a long time now.”
• O’Banion: “I think there’s a difference between a shooter and an assassin, and larissa developing into an assassin. Last year she was a shooter. This year, I look at her, and she wants her number called. That’s an assassin. Larissa’s mindset is completely different. She knows she’s on evey team’s scouting report. She gets extra reps up in the gym and she wants the ball.”

It was the first time O’Banion and her players talked in public about her diagnosis last week of lymphoma. She had her first chemotherapy Monday.

Lurken said simply, “We’re playing this season for her.”

O’Banion said at this point, she “feels great.”

“I hope I’m doing everything our team needs me to do,” she said. “My goal is to never let them down. My goal to manage (herself) and be smart. I’m going to be on the sidelines as often as possible. I’ll probably show up some days when someone advises  me not to. But I won’t put our team at risk. I’ll always be at 100 percent or (assistant coach Geoff Lanier) coach Geoff be on there.”

“This is part of life. I’m grateful God chose me to tell the story about it.”

Box score

Entire post-game press conference (at bottom of story).

Montia Johnson put back a missed shot with 5 seconds to go to give Kent State a 58-55 victory over Belmont Tuesday. It was KSU’s first win of the season.
Larissa Lurken had a career-high 20 points, including two key three-point shots in the second half.
Cici Shannon equaled her season high with 17 points and had seven rebounds. Johnson had 11 points. Point guard Mikell Chinn had 10 assists.
The win gives Kent State a 1-3 record. The team plays next against Texas-Corpus Christi at 6 p.m. Friday in the Cal Poly Holiday tournament.

In Belmont, Kent State faces a team that returns all five starters and is picked to win the Ohio Valley Conference.

Tuesday home game begins at the strange time of 11 a.m. The game originally was supposed to be Tuesday night, but it was moved when Kent State’s football game against Akron was moved to Tuesday night so it could be on ESPN. That football game, of course, itself has been rescheduled because of the schedule snafu caused by Kent’s snowed-out game in Buffalo.

Bellmont, like Kent State, is 0-3. But it has lost to Vanderbilt (3=0), North Alabama (3-))and Louisville (4=0). The score of the last Thursday’s game against 12th-ranked Louisville was 95-35.

Kent lost to Belmont 84-60 last season on Belmont’s home court in Nashville. Belmont went on to a 14-18 season but finished second on the OVC with a 10-6 record.

The Bruins are led by 2014-15 OVC Preseason Player of the Year, Jordyn Luffman-Hartsfield, a 6-1 senior guard-forward who averaged 14.3 points per game last season.  Also returning are 5-6 senior guard Katie Carroll,  a 2014 All-OVC Tournament Team selection, and 5-5 guard Taylor Mills, who earned league Newcomer of the Week honors six times last year.

Three-game statistical leaders (per game except as noted):

• Points: Larissa Lurken 10.3, Cici Shannon 10.0
• Rebounds: Jordan Korinek 4.7, Montia Johnson 3.7
• Assists: Naddiyah Cross 4.3, Mikell Chinn 4.0
• Steals: Krista White 3.0, Chinn 2.0
• Turnovers: Cross 3.3, White 3.3
• Minutes: Lurken 31.3. White 29.3.

• Three-point shots; Larissa Lurken 6 of 18. Naddiyah Cross 2 of 5.

Team stats:

• Scoring: KSU 57.0, Opponents 71.3 (minus 14.3 margin)
• Field goal percentage: KSU 38.5, opponents 44.0.
• Three pointers: KSU 9 of 30 for 30 percent. Opponents 20 of 52 for 38.5 percent.
• Rebounds: KSU 41.7, opponents 33 (plus 8.7)
• Assists: KSU 15.7, opponents 15
• Turnovers: KSU 19.7, opponents 13.3 (minus 6.4)

Full stats are on KSU website

(Updated with Sunday games)

Kent State (0-3) is the only MAC women’s team yet to win a game,

Ohio and Akron are 3-0. Ohio, which tied with Kent State and Miami for last in the Eastern Division last season is off to its best start since 2006. Akron has won all three of its games at home and has an early season RPI of 31.

Western Michigan is 2-1, including a 74-59 victory over North Dakota State at home. NDSU beat Kent State 74-68 in Bismarck in Kent’s opener.

Highest RPI (25th) in the conference belongs to Central Michigan, which is 1-1 but lost to 13th-ranked Kentucky at home, 71-68. Central was picked to win the MAC West and tournament at the pre-season media day.

Buffalo, which was picked to win the MAC East, is 2-1. So is Bowling Green, which was 30-5 last season but graduated six seniors.On Sunday, MAC teams lost to three power conference schools. It was

• No. 12 Louisville (4-0) 69, Ball State 56
• No. 24 Purdue (2-1) 66, Toledo (1-2) 48
• Michigan (3-1) 74 , Western Michigan (2-1) 47

Here’s a link to the early MAC standings.

If an 18-point loss can be encouraging, Kent State’s 72-54 defeat by the Big Ten’s Northwestern was.
Consider:

• Northwestern (3-0) had defeated its first two opponents by a combined 164-84. It beat Hampton, which has won five straight Mid Eastern Athletic Conference champions, by 26.
• Kent State outrebounded the Wildcats, one of the few teams Kent State will play this year that are taller, 46-36.
• The Flashes showed a scrambling full-court defense that gave Northwestern real problems at times. The Wildcats are an experienced team with all five starters back, including three players who have gotten some all-Big Ten honors at guard. “Our defensive pressure certainly made Northwestern uncomfortable,” Kent coach Danny O’Banion said in her post-game interview on Golden Flashes Radio “If we can make a team like that uncomfortable, we can do it to a lot of people.”
• Shooting guard Melanie Stubbs (10 points) and Krista White (8 points) showed scoring production in a position that’s going to need to score if Kent is going to win. O’Banion called them the “x-factor” in the team’s offense. They combined for 9 of 18 shooting. Stubbs had six rebounds, five of them offensive. They were all in the second half. White had four steals. Both played very hard.
• Freshman point guard Naddiyah Cross, who leads the team in assists, had five more. She actually played two more minutes than starting guard Mikell Chinn and had five points, including a three-pointer.
• Freshman guard Madison Ridout got her first college baskets with a two- and a three-pointer.
• Forward Montia Johnson haad eight points and nine rebounds in a very active 24 minutes. But like Tuesday’s game against Youngstown, she didn’t score in the second half.

Things that weren’t good:

• The Flashes, who shot only 32 percent against Youngstown State Tuesday, shot only 34 percent. Northwestern, though, had held Hampton to 14 percent.
• Starting center Cici Shannon and starting forward Jordan Korinek continue to struggle shooting. Shannon was 4 of 12 and missed a lot of close-in shots. Korinek was only 1 of 4. She had six rebounds but fouled out. She played only two minutes in the second half.
• Kent State had 21 turnovers and gave up 18 fast-break points.
• Kent State got only seven foul shots and made just two. Northwestern had 12 fouls, the Flashes 23.
• Guard Larissa Lurken, Kent’s best shooter, was 3 for 14 and missed all six of her three-point shots.
• Kent State was only 2 for 11 on three-pointers.

Kent State out-rebounded a taller Big Ten team Friday, but Northwestern shot much better and beat the Flashes Friday, 72-54.

Melanie Stubbs and Cici Shannon led Kent State with 10 points each. Montia Johnson had nine rebounds while Stubbs and Jordan Korinek had six as KSU held a 46-36 rebounding advantage.

The loss drops Kent State to 0-3.

Northwestern is 3-0 and has won its three games by an average of 33 points. Kent State came the closest.

The Wildcats shot 46 percent, including 6 of 14 three-pointers and 20 foul shots. Kent State shot 32 percent, with just two three-pointers. It got only seven free throws and made two.

A more detailed story will be up soon.